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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29504475">i mean, i'm sick of meaning (i just wanna hold you)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/overbiter/pseuds/overbiter'>overbiter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>You! Me! Dancing! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Silicon Valley (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Feelings Realization, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slow Dancing, The Richard Hendricks Repression Hour, Unresolved Tension</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:55:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29504475</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/overbiter/pseuds/overbiter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The rest of Jared’s sentence seems to trickle into his head like water, and he feels the fabric of the tie slip through his fingers as a new wave of panic settles over him.<br/>“Sorry, I—did you say ‘dancing’?”<br/></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>You! Me! Dancing! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2298848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i mean, i'm sick of meaning (i just wanna hold you)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ok so the thought of Jared teaching Richard to slow dance for someone else haunted me for literal months, and that combined with the iconic awkward gay yearning anthem of Bodys by Car Seat Headrest ("those are-you've got some nice shoulders/I'd like to put my hands around them"!! It's jarrichism, babes!) possessed me and would not release me from a vice grip until I wrote all 8k+ words of this. Come get y'all's juice.</p><p>Set around S2-S4, vaguely in the hostel era of the timeline.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not like he’s never.</p><p>Listen,</p><p>Richard’s been to—to fancy events before. There was his aunt’s wedding, and then prom—which, okay, yeah. Him and Big Head had basically spent a handful of hours orbiting the perimeter of the dance floor until they found an opportunity to ditch the whole thing entirely, steal beer from Big Head’s parents, and get drunk on the playground swing sets by his house instead—so maybe not the best example. He’s even been to plenty of “networking opportunities” with Monica, charity events and embarrassingly desperate rich people parties that were already old the first time, dragged along like a stubborn teenager, ill-fitting Easter Sunday best included.</p><p> He watches his reflection grimace back at him in the mirror as he tries, again, to get his bowtie to cooperate. It occurs to him, as the fabric slips through his fingers for the third fucking time, that a successful attempt might only result in making him look absolutely ridiculous. Not that he doesn’t always look—well, anyway. He runs a hand through his hair, considers doing...<em>something</em> with it, eying the product Jared had gotten him at the drugstore last week (“Oh, Richard, I couldn’t help thinking about how <em>sharp</em> you’d look! How dignified! You’d turn every head in the valley!”) with a dubious look. He decides the last thing he needs is more variables to have to account for, more potential avenues for him to fuck up and come out looking like a complete douchebag.</p><p>But yeah, it isn’t that Richard feels unprepared for like, this absurd gala he has to go to for “CTRL+ALT+DELETE POVERTY”, or whatever other asinine slogan someone’s chosen to justify stuffing a bunch of rich people into a ballroom for few hours just to eat two thousand dollar dinners and talk about how they’re Doing The Right Thing. It’s just that...it’s just that this specific night has a non-zero chance of ending with him getting laid, which is. Kind of a Big Fucking Deal. For once, Richard actually has a plus one: a nice girl with long dark hair that he met on Tinder named Jennifer...goes by Jen, works at YouTube, sends him two (2) laughing emojis every time he makes a bad pun. They’d gone for drinks once and it’d been...well, nice enough to ask her to join him tonight. She was cool. Maybe too cool. It was clear after a few minutes of small talk that she had her shit together to a significantly higher degree than Richard could ever hope to achieve. Which, like, cool! Awesome! But it also made him feel like there was a shoe that was inevitably going to drop, a moment where he would eventually have to expose himself as nothing more than a twitchy manchild parading around in a Real Adult Who Knows What He’s Doing costume. And that too would be fine, will be fine, when it happens (which it will), but he’d like to get like. Kissed, at the very least, before the big unveiling. With the shoe. And the costume. Et cetera.</p><p>Right. No bowtie, then. He crumples it in his hand and turns away from the mirror, deciding instead to search his room for the black tie he’s sure he must own. He takes a step forward and nearly collides with Jared in the process.</p><p> </p><p>“Ah! <em>Je</em>sus!” Richard jumps back and knocks his elbow on the frame of his loft bed with a hiss. How did he—? When—? You can’t just. Just. Apparate, on people like that, Jared. Christ.</p><p>“Oh, gosh—Richard! I didn’t mean—you’d been in here for so long...I didn’t want to disturb you, but—well, I’m sorry. I’ll admit, I was listening from the hallway, and your muttering sounded more distressed than usual, I—are you alright?” He reaches out, like he’s going to touch Richard’s elbow, but Richard flinches, cradles it with his other hand instead. He’s already frazzled enough without the added humiliation of Jared’s overbearing Florence Nightingale routine.</p><p>“Yeah it-it’s fine. I’m just. Anxious. About bringing Jen to the. The thing...tonight.” He moves to drop heavily into his desk chair under the loft with a frustrated noise, twitching when he bumps his still-tender arm against the armrest. Excellent.</p><p>Jared’s eyes soften. He draws one hand to his chest, fingers curling at the base of his throat. Richard watches his smile turn watery, eyes gleaming, as he sighs and clasps his hands together. It’s all...it’s a lot.</p><p>“Oh, Richard,” he breathes, looking wistful. His eyes are cast, unfocused, on the wall, like he’s lost in a fantasy, gazing longingly across the english countryside, “it’s all very Austenian isn’t it? You, the dashing suitor, preparing to whisk some fair maiden off to the ball! Your date must be exuberant, getting to attend such an event on the arm of Richard Hendricks! I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.”</p><p>Richard kicks one dress shoe against the other absentmindedly and squawks at the little scuff mark it leaves on the leather. His attempts to buff it out with the tip of the other shoe only succeed in making it worse, which is just. It feels a bit more like a little cosmic joke at his expense than a hint, really, but he’ll take it anyway. He resigns to planting both feet firmly on the ground before he can cause more damage, eyes still fixed on the carpet.</p><p>“Heh, yeah. Well, I’m sure I’ll find some way to turn it into a disaster.” he looks sheepishly at Jared, immediately regretting it. He looks. Fond...eyes meeting Richard’s in a way that feels unnecessarily intense, almost suffocating. And—Jesus, whydoes he do that? <em>How</em> does he do that?  Isn’t fondness supposed to be like. Gentle? All soft smiles and tender looks and—oh, fuck, Jared was right. The whole thing is just. So...horrifically <em>Austenian</em>.  </p><p>“Don’t be silly,” Jared hands him his black tie, beaming, and. Oh yeah, that. The date. He should probably be getting ready, “You know, I’ve been to a few events like this myself when I worked at Hooli. They really were delightful—the music, the dancing, the mingling!” He draws both hands up to his chest, and smiles nostalgically. Richard wonders what kind of girls went to those events, if Jared <em>mingled</em> with any of them. He shakes his head to dislodge the thought quickly, the bitterness of it catching him off-guard. The rest of Jared’s sentence seems to trickle into his head like water, and he feels the fabric of the tie slip through his fingers as a new wave of panic settles over him.</p><p>“Sorry, I—did you say ‘dancing’?”</p><p>Jared turns that smile back on him. Richard feels like his entire digestive system’s been replaced by a washing machine.</p><p>“Oh, yes! Most of the galas I attended involved dancing later in the evening. It’s always been my favorite part.”</p><p>Richard’s mouth is now spectacularly dry. He inhales through his nose, tries to silence the part of his brain that is all too happy now to remind him of his extensive career as a professional wallflower, bar the one time that Alexis Matthews let him dance with her for like, five minutes. It had been at homecoming or winter ball or whatever, and all he’d really done was stand in front of her, terrified, sweaty hands hovering over her sides but never daring to touch, swaying awkwardly and off-beat until she’d gotten embarrassed and left to go join her friends on the other side of the gym.</p><p>“Richard? Are you feeling unwell?” Jared places the back of one huge hand to his forehead. His skin is freezing, Jared’s always freezing, and of course, why wouldn’t he be? He’s like. A specter that’s haunted Richard’s life for years now, apparating in doorways and filling out tax forms and asking Richard if he’d like some tea, really, it’s no trouble, he’ll put the kettle on. It’s fine, whatever, Richard’s used to it. “If you aren’t up to attending the gala tonight, I could help you draft a cancellation text to your date. My old therapist said I was extremely skilled at mitigating the psychological pain of rejection!”</p><p>“I can’t. Dancing?” it comes out on a wheeze. Richard watches Jared tilt his head slightly, watches something snap into place with a little <em>click!</em> somewhere in his brain. His eyes go soft, piteous, and Richard decides he would like to disappear now.</p><p>“You don’t know how to dance.” Richard doesn’t answer, because it’s not a question. It’s just Jared, taking Richard’s messy spluttered pieces of this or that: his thoughts, his words, his feelings, and rearranging them, moving them around, putting them back together into something coherent, creating a whole better than the sum of its parts. He should really just ask Jared to tie his tie for him.</p><p>But then there’s the issue of Jared’s hands. And Jared’s fingers, the potential for contact: eyes, skin, fingertips. Jared looking at Richard the way Jared always looks at Richard, up close. And that’s—</p><p>There’s a line.</p><p>There’s a line, and there’s a girl who he has to pick up in—probably less than an hour now, actually. There’s a heavily encrypted, possibly corrupted file labeled <em>jared_dunn.txt</em> taking up valuable storage space in his brain and that’s fine. That’s already more than enough. He puts on the tie clumsily and gently bats Jared away when he tries to help.</p><p>        <em>Dancing. </em>His mind decides that now, right now, is the time to crunch the numbers, look at the variables and run as many scenarios where tonight ends humiliation as it possibly can. it all feels so fucking <em>futile</em>.  He thinks again about the human costume, the dropping of the shoes.</p><p>“I’m gonna cancel. This—this is stupid.” He starts looking around for his phone, ignoring the concerned look he can literally <em>feel</em> Jared giving him.</p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>“Yeah, I—I’m gonna make a total dick of myself with the dancing shit, it’s. It’s not worth it—ah ha!” He pulls the phone out of the pocket of a hoodie he’d left draped over the chair, holding it up with a flourish. It’s fine. There’s a ton of work to address on the platform, and it’s not like this thing with Jen was heading anywhere really, and —</p><p>“Richard—the basic choreography is fairly simple. My foster mother used to tell me I was ‘built like a spider,” he nods, gestures to himself with a smile “all legs, hard to love', as the saying goes, and I picked it up in a snap!” Richard doesn’t look up, giving a little scoff as he taps the imessage icon.</p><p>“That’s great for you, Jared, but I’m not. I wouldn’t even know where to put my hands, heh.” He doesn’t mean it to come out as, god, as bitter as it does. He’s halfway through typing out the phrase “stomach bug” when he feels a hand wrap around his right bicep.</p><p>“Um—”</p><p>“Like this,” Jared is hunched over in front of him. Richard wants to squirm, pull away, but the light press of Jared’s hand on his arm anchors him in place. He swallows once, mouth dry, thumbs hovering over his phone’s keyboard, “it would be easier to show you if you stood up...if you don’t mind.”</p><p>Richard takes a moment to weigh his options. The easiest thing to do would be to nudge Jared’s hand aside and  say no, really, it’s not a big deal; he’s going to call off the date and lock himself in his room for the rest of the night to bang out a few things he needs to get done anyway, and it’ll be fine. The easiest thing—the thing he <em>should</em> do—would be to remove himself from the situation and find neutral ground, keep himself productive and distracted, reassess the implications of the jackhammer <em>thud</em> of his heart and possibly other organs at a later time.</p><p>C:/Users/Richard/Documents/Untitled/Random/ETC/New Folder/DO NOT OPEN/jared_dunn.txt</p><p>&gt;Last Accesed: <em>not fucking now, Hendricks</em>.</p><p>There has to be some middle ground here.</p><p>So instead, he says “uh, o-okay,” and puts his phone down on the desk beside him. Jared, in turn, takes his hand away and straightens. “One second, um—” he moves past Jared, and gently closes the door, just in case. When he returns, it’s just the two of them, facing each other with their hands at their sides. Richard clears his throat and ends up swallowing wrong, choking on his own spit with a cough. Jared eyes him with mild concern for a moment before his face shifts to something more neutral and focused.</p><p>“Alright, so you’ll want to—” Jared’s hand reaches out to take Richard’s elbow, and Richard lets him guide his arm gently into place, letting his hand hover right below the spot where Jared’s own arm meets his torso. When Jared moves to place his hand back around Richard’s arm, Richard can feel the fabric shift under his own fingers. He lets his hand rest there properly, the scratch of Jared’s dress shirt slightly harsh on his skin.</p><p>“R-Right, um.” His face feels hot. Jared’s fingers are probably still freezing, but Richard is acutely aware of the press of his hand on Richard’s arm, the shape of it branded into Richard’s peripherals. Jared’s eyes flick to his free hand and he flexes it self consciously.</p><p>“Good!” Richard can’t help but notice the tightness in Jared’s voice. It’s slight, but it’s there, a departure from his usual effortless doting, and Richard does his best not to think too hard about the implications of him acquiring such a close understanding of Jared’s, uh, <em>vocal minutiae</em>. “now, next you’d take her other hand,” Jared continues, and ah, yes, the other hand. Richard takes a beat that’s maybe a little too long to process the instruction, and then...yup, uh, that’s. His hand! Fingers laced with Jared’s! Jared’s fingers, Richard notes, are still freezing.</p><p>“Cold.” He wheezes, “you-your hands are. I mean—ha, I guess—I’m. Uh—” He giggles little hysterically, “W—what am I, heh, yoda? <em>Cold, your hands are</em>. Wow, haha.”</p><p>Yes. Excellent. Flawless, fantastic fucking<em> yoda impression</em>, Hendricks, perfect save. Home run. It’s a wonder you aren’t drowning in pussy every time you so much as go out to buy your overpriced little cartons of soy milk. Jared, infinitely merciful Jared, <em>smiles</em> and ducks his head, the tips of his ears glowing pink.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Richard, I run chilly.” Jared tilts his head apologetically, “I know I don’t have the best circulation. Whenever we used to play funeral home back in Pennsylvania, my foster brothers would always make me be the corpse, which I didn’t really mind, but one time, they did try to bury me alive in the backyard—”</p><p>“Jared, it’s fine. I—I’m just being an idiot. Your hands—” Richard coughs, always knocked a little off-kilter by the casual way Jared’s tosses jagged little pieces of his past out for anyone listening to catch. It feels <em>intimate</em> in the current context, and Richard desperately needs to pump the breaks on any further sharing of traumatic childhood memories, at least while their fingers are still threaded together, “—your hands are fine, don’t worry...uh, what’s next?”</p><p>“Oh!” Jared perks up, eyes bright, “alright, now you take a step, and I’ll follow” He gestures with the hand still clasping Richard’s. Richard, in turn, makes a face and looks uncomfortably at the floor.</p><p>“Are you sure I should be leading?” Richard asks his shoes, “You’re, ah, you’re taller.”  He can hear the way Jared’s smile shapes his words when he replies, feels his eyes on him even when he’s turned away like this.</p><p>“You’ll be leading with your date, silly. I don’t want to assume, but I’m sure she’s not as...well, she won’t be nearly as rangy as I am.” Jared gives a self-deprecating little chuckle and Richard lifts his head to look at him again. Yes, Richard. Of course. The date. The fucking girl you’re meeting in less than an hour. When Richard lifts his head, Jared’s smiling at him shyly, encouraging him to begin.</p><p>“Um. Okay, uh. I...I guess I’ll start then.” Richard takes a tentative step forward and steps gracelessly on to Jared’s foot, “oh f—god damn it, I’m sorry.”</p><p>He’s still stuttering out apologies when Jared moves both hands to his arms to steady him, letting Richard take a moment, arms hanging at his sides. His face is hot, his hands are clammy and he can’t stand still: shifting from one foot to the other, flexing his hands, rocking back on his heels. He feels absolutely humiliated, and does his best to find comfort in the fact that it’s only Jared, who would probably throw himself on a literal sword to protect Richard’s honor, bearing witness to this.</p><p>A brief silence passes between them, Jared waiting, fingers steepled politely, before Richard breaks it:</p><p>“Y-yeah, uh. Like I said it’s. It’s that bad. Not, um, not really worth trying to...yeah.”  He knows his face is red, can feel the tell-tale prick of sweat at his hairline as well as the stomach-churning chorus of <em>no no no</em> <em>this is fucking ridiculous </em>playing on repeat in his head. Richard had his human costume in order. He was going to meet a nice girl and have a nice night and maybe put himself in a situation where he didn’t feel so thoroughly defective for like five hours, but instead he’s making a fool of himself in his own bedroom, stumbling through the basic fucking human activity of taking one single <em>fucking</em> step forward (that’s all he had to do, take one step forward, almost thirty years old and he still feels like some gangly sweaty-palmed teenager tripping over nothing like some fucking—)</p><p>Jared takes his hand again, and Richard short-circuits. His mind screeches to a halt, blissfully silent for all of a fraction of a second before it’s lurching forward, twice as frantic as before.</p><p>“Sorry, um. What?” Richard asks, like an idiot, because Jared said something, and he was too busy having what’s probably his fifth meltdown of the week to hear it. Jared smiles at him, still holding Richard’s hand in his own. He tugs on it, hesitantly, gently. A suggestion. Richard lets him.</p><p>“I said, maybe we could try again? If you’d like.” Richard is so focused on his own hand, the way it looks practically dainty in Jared’s palm, that he almost misses what he says a second time. He coughs, eyes darting back and forth between Jared’s face and the floor.</p><p>“Oh. Sure.” He returns his hand to Jared’s arm and tries his best to center himself, despite Jared looming over him like a mother giraffe. He inhales shakily, does what he can to get out of his own head, but he can’t shake the feeling of how wrong and out of place he feels in his own body. He can’t relax, can’t get himself to move the way he wants to, and it would all be so easy if he could just get someone else to do it for him. He worries at his bottom lip with his teeth for a moment, then looks to Jared, who’s been waiting so patiently for Richard to get his shit together, as usual.</p><p>“Jared? Uh...could you um—do you think you could lead?” He’s trying to sound casual, to minimize how pathetic he feels, but the lilt he gives his voice at the end turns into more of a crack, and yeah, not great for the self-confidence or whatever it is he’s supposed to be building with this little exercise. Not great for the Vietnam-caliber middle school dance flashbacks he’s still trying to shake off either. He looks away with a wince, but not before catching Jared’s confused little head tilt or the way his expression puzzles.</p><p>“But Richard, you—”</p><p>“I. I know, I’ll be leading,” He cuts Jared off quickly, “I just—I’m not—” he squeezes the hand on Jared's arm into a fist anxiously without thinking, bunching up the the shirt fabric into his palm before he realizes what he’s doing and pulls back, settling back into position with an awkward pat to the now wrinkled fabric and a mumbled “sorry”. He just doesn’t want to mess up Jared’s clothes. He knows how much his professionalism means to him. That’s all. ”I’m bad at it. I don’t want to do it. Just show me and I’ll figure it out later.” he explains to the carpet.</p><p>Jared looks at him a moment longer, considering, before he smiles and says “of course, Richard” (big surprise). Richard stands, useless, as Jared takes out his phone and reaches over to place it on the desk beside them. He turns to look at Richard, questioning.<br/>
“It might help you keep rhythm if we try with music? Something similar to what you’d be listening to tonight? If you’re comfortable with it.”</p><p>Richard doesn’t think it’ll make much of a difference. In order for the music to help his rhythm he’d have to have a sense of rhythm in the first place, and also maybe just stop being Richard Hendricks altogether, but Jared has this hopeful, encouraging look on his face, and he’s trying to help, so Richard nods dumbly and let’s Jared put on something soft and unobtrusive. He returns to his spot by Richard, does what Richard can only describe as something between a nod and a bow, and rearranges their hands.</p><p>“Alright,” Jared’s speaking softly, like Richard’s a horse he’s trying not to spook, which honestly...Richard can’t be offended, it isn’t too far off, “I’m going to step forward with my left foot. Get ready to move your right foot back.” he taps gently at the toe of Richard’s shoe with his own, and Richard nearly jumps a mile, covering it with an overzealous nod. He feels ridiculous as he steps back awkwardly, and a little more ridiculous when Jared’s encouraging “well done!” triggers a flicker of pride in his chest. When Jared moves his right leg forward, it’s easier.</p><p>Richard has considered it before, the possibility that he may have an unhealthy obsession with control: the acquisition of it, the gnawing lack of it. He knows that, in the end, it’s the loose grip he currently has on his life that he values so dearly, the threat of it all crashing down and being yanked out from underneath him snapping at his heels, constantly. This is what propels him forward at 4am, eyes red and aching, most nights of the week. If he thought a bit harder about it he might come to the conclusion that this is what motivates him to keep Jared in his corner, so yielding and eager to please, happily participating in Richard’s little power fantasies, the ones where he gets everything he wants and never has to hear someone say ‘no’’. But no, not really, because if Richard were to think about it just a little bit longer, he’d come to a second conclusion: that Jared’s just really, <em>really</em> good at his job, and Pied Piper would probably shake apart of the duct tape and chewing gum holding it together without him, not to mention that the idea that Richard might be some kind of sick Belsonian, power-hungry freak makes him want to puke his guts out on his nice shoes.</p><p>All this to say that it isn’t a relinquishing of power that makes this easier for him. There’s nothing deep about letting Jared lead them, the whole thing is ridiculous enough already without him analyzing it. Sometimes things are difficult, and Jared is more than willing to do the hard parts so he doesn’t have to. And it’s nice; it’s nice knowing that Jared will bring him sandwiches when he forgets to eat all day, and remind him to refill his water bottle. It’s nice that Jared will lead, but only if he asks him too.</p><p>“Richard? Are you alright?” He’s stalled, head tilted like a cocker spaniel. Richard clears his throat and nods with more enthusiasm than is really appropriate.</p><p>“Yuh—uh, yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking.” He doesn’t recognize the song playing on Jared’s phone. They all sound the same. Jared hasn’t moved, so Richard keeps talking, “you, um, you really think this will work, huh? Like. I’ll, uh, pass?”</p><p>“Pass?”</p><p>“Yeah like,” He wishes Jared hadn’t stopped, he doesn’t want to think about this right now, “I don’t know, you think I’ll pull this off? I’ll...I’m gonna fuck it up.”</p><p>Jared squeezes his side briefly, encouragingly, “you’re not.” His voice is so soft, Richard almost leans closer before thinking better of it. He’s insecure again, fighting every urge to make a fool of himself and squirm his way gracelessly out of the situation. He keeps having to remind himself, almost desperately, that there are no stakes. It’s just Jared, the one person in the universe who sees him as a safe bet. Jared, who’d probably eat rat poison before he ever even thought of judging him for being himself: Richard Hendricks, a pathetic mosaic of failures that everyone else seems to zero in on the moment he enters a room. His friend is just helping him prepare to go on a decent date with a woman who, let’s be honest, is way too good for him. The least he could do is swallow the urge to self-sabotage and be normal for a few lousy minutes.</p><p>“Yeah, ok.” It’s the best he can do at the moment, but it’s something, “we can keep going, uh, if you want. I think it’s helping me...prepare...” he trails off with a wince. Jared nods, as if this is all very normal and uneventful for him. Richard doesn’t think about the ties on the door and the girls who have to push up on their toes to kiss Jared goodbye in the morning. He doesn’t let himself wonder if any of them could dance, if Jared ever taught them how. His hand on Jared’s bicep tightens, just slightly.</p><p>“Alright,” Jared is speaking so gently, his voice nearly overtaken by the music coming from Richard’s desk, “just in case—she may want you to do this,” He steps forward, enough that Richard is suddenly incredibly aware of his respiratory patterns and how weird and intrusive they must be on Jared’s personal space, and loops his arms around Richard’s waist.</p><p>“Oh.” Richard says, because he’s useless, but Jared ignores him, instead gesturing towards Richard’s arms with his head.</p><p>“She may keep her arms like this, or she may rest them on your shoulders. It depends on how comfortable you both are.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Richard remembers prom, and his own hands hovering at Alexis’ sides, and his earlier itemized list of reasons for not letting Jared help him with his tie. He wonders who Jared took to prom.</p><p>“Are you comfortable right now, Richard?”</p><p>No, of course not. Richard is never comfortable, and he always gets weird with these kinds of things. Touching things. Courtship things.</p><p>Jared things.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m fine.” He says, his own voice quieter than he means it to be, barely a pathetic little croak above the singer-songwriter warbling from the desk. Jared grins.</p><p>“Alright!” He chirps, the shift in his voice’s volume nearly startling Richard and making him trip over his own shoes again, “Let’s start over, beginning with your left foot, moving back.”</p><p>Jared is patient, giving Richard enough time to follow his lead with minimal stumbling. The two of them settle into something that could pass (in a dimly lit room, if someone was watching from far away, squinting) for a waltz—okay, a  <em>modified</em> waltz. Richard keeps his eyes forward, as if  looking straight through Jared, trained on the wall behind him. There’s static buzzing in his ears, mixing with whatever ambient indie Pandora station Jared’s set to waft around them in the middle of the room. He reminds himself to breathe, and mostly forgets anyway.</p><p>Jared makes him so nervous sometimes, the way he holds Richard up like he’s an heirloom vase and a bolt of lightning all at the same time. He’d snapped at Jared earlier in the week at some meeting after he’d presented Richard to the secretary (<em>administrative assistant, Richard</em>, Jared had kindly corrected him later, <em>secretary can feel somewhat gendered</em>) like he was a decorated general, rattling off praise so effortlessly it had made Richard’s skin crawl. He’d felt bad about it after, and managed a barely-audible apology in the hallway. Jared wasn’t even supposed to be at the meeting. Richard had asked him to come, last-minute, when he felt his nerves start to chew at his insides, to serve as a competent failsafe when Richard inevitably started his little tailspin and placed Pied Piper in jeopardy again.</p><p>If Richard was being honest with himself, there was something vaguely comforting about it, the reliability of knowing Jared’s infallible reverence would still be there to break his wounded pride’s fall no matter how bad he fucked it all up and embarrassed himself time after time. He’d gotten in the habit of taking Jared places where he felt vulnerable in his inadequacy, where he could trust fall back into Jared’s conviction, his stalwart insistence that Richard was something exceptional. Jared, of course, was all too happy to indulge him at every turn, even unknowingly. It was simple symbiosis, mutually fulfilling. Someone with a normal brain would probably call it “friendship”.</p><p>But—if (and this was a pretty big “if”) Richard was being even more honest with himself, he’d have to admit that Jared’s admiration had a—let’s call it “complicated”—effect on him. Sometimes it felt dangerous, like Jared was pouring gasoline on a fire, unaware he was feeding something that would eventually grow strong enough to bite him. Richard would clench his jaw, draw his hands into fists as Jared waxed poetic about his mind and his leadership, resisting the urge to dig his fingers into his own hair and tug until he could simply crack himself in half, split laterally down the middle like a walnut. However, like clockwork, he would always end up in the same place once they made it back to the hostel: wound tight like a spool of copper wire in his room, hands wringing, nearly trembling, cataloguing every kind and complimentary thing Jared had said about him that day. He wanted to drink every ounce of it up, hold it in his hands and swallow it whole as if he could absorb it, make it a part of him and have it all be halfway true. It consumed him: the raw, stinging desire to be important, to be <em>right</em>, and more importantly—to prove everyone else <em>wrong</em>. Jared could give it to him any time he needed it, readily, but never insincerely, and that’s when it stopped being fun.</p><p>Because it was one thing to let Erlich play salesman and do his best to spin shit into gold while he marketed Richard around Palo Alto. It was another to be complicit in Jared’s delusion that Richard was primed to be the next Henry Ford of the digital frontier. Jared, who had once turned to him on the way home from a lunch meeting with some insurance douche, just to say, “You were brilliant back there, Richard. Striking. A radiant Sirius A streaking across the sky, like a charioteer.” Richard had snorted and looked out the window, mumbled something about Diocles that was too soft for Jared to hear, but he’d barely slept that night, so wired he thought he might literally fall to pieces if he didn’t lie perfectly still.</p><p>Jared’s gaze, the way he saw Richard even when he wasn’t looking at him, was a white-hot spotlight trained on him at all times: sweltering, blinding, nearly unbearable and entirely exhilarating. It put Richard on edge...and kind of grossed him out. He felt like the subject of a sleazy billboard ad, or a late night infomercial. And wouldn’t it be so much easier if that’s how it was: if Jared was just a liar, if he was just being really nice, if he had his own selfish motives for transforming Richard into a golden calf. But really, it was all Richard, lying by omission. He felt guilty, hoarding Jared’s praise like something feral and starving, when he didn’t deserve it in the first place. He always ended up agitated, vibrating on the precipice of this very tall pedestal he’d sat by and let Jared build beneath him, waiting for the time to come when Jared, too, would realize the jig was up, and Richard would have to contend with a dizzyingly long fall from grace. It made him itch, pissed him off, so he took it out on Jared, then took it back, the whole time pretending it was all simple mortification.</p><p>It made him a little sick to think about it now, and he almost wants to stop just to apologize: for the cruelty of it, for the mixed signals. He really does consider Jared a friend—a very good friend, in fact, a friend he probably (definitely) doesn’t deserve. He knows Jared’s been through a lot. He resents the possibility that he might turn out to be another thing to happen to him. He opens his mouth to say something, but all he does is exhale.</p><p>There’s a cocktail of anxiety, stubbornness and low self-esteem that churns reliably in the pit of his stomach at most times, his own personal little maelstrom. Hurricane Hendricks, truly a natural-born disaster. Now, though, he swears something is shifting. He can feel the burn of nausea that always seems to crouch at the back of his throat settle mercifully somewhere behind his ribs, content to smolder quietly in his chest. His shoulders unspool from where they’ve been drawn up defensively, nearly to his ears. The waters, it would seem, are quieting. Miraculously, nothing stupid has tumbled out of his mouth for ten consecutive seconds.</p><p>“Jared,” he hears himself say, and ah, there it is.</p><p>“Yes, Richard?” Jared is still leading them back and forth. Richard’s sister had a VHS tape growing up, some cartoon about a porcelain music box ballerina who danced on a little track and dreamed of performing in Paris. She loved it so much, she eventually wore it out so badly that it wouldn’t play. Jared would have loved it, probably would have gotten all misty eyed and romantic, shared some horrific anecdote with Richard about his childhood. Richard clears his throat.</p><p> “What else, um, what else might she do?” Jared looks at him for a moment, caught, Richard watches the little gears turn over and over in his head. In a panic, Richard turns defensive: “I just mean, I-uhh—I should be, um. I should be—Ready. For anything. Prepared! Like. What if she—what happens next?” He swallows. Loudly. Jared, to his credit, just nods.</p><p>“Well—Richard, I can’t tell you exactly what she will or will not do, but—” His eyes dart to the side for one frantic second before he quietly regains his composure. Richard might miss it if they weren’t so close. “In my experience, well, she might relax. She might get closer—that is, if she’s comfortable.”</p><p>Oh. Well. This again.</p><p>Is Richard comfortable? He’s not sure. He can feel Jared lightly fidgeting  against his back, the tapping of his fingers against his other hand, out of time with whatever horrific palpitations Richard is experiencing. He feels like he hasn’t taken a breath since they started—what the fuck are they doing here, exactly? <em>Practicing</em>. Right. Jared is teaching him how to dance like a normal person. For his date. Richard feels like something in his brain might be unraveling. Something nestled deep within him suggests that he run, out of his bedroom, out of the hostel, screaming.</p><p>Instead, he manages a cracked “o-okay.” and steps forward into Jared’s space without making eye contact. This is all educational, no need to overthink it. No need to be a maladjusted creep. He just needs to start treating this like the learning experience Jared obviously wants it to be, buckle down and study the movements, the pieces of everything, break them down so he can reconstruct it later when Jen inevitably gets bored watching him stutter over some wine he can’t pronounce and wants to do something else.</p><p>He tries his best to put himself into Jen’s headspace, to project himself into Jared’s body and—ok, yeah, this is getting weird fairly quickly, so maybe not. Instead, he lets his hands run up the length of Jared’s arms, the faint starchy scratch of cotton against his palms oddly grounding now, and rests his wrists lightly on Jared’s shoulders. It’s a maneuver that requires him to close the remaining distance between them and rest his head against Jared’s chest. Through the chorus of internal screaming that immediately ignites in his brain, he’s grateful, at least, for the excuse to keep his head turned.</p><p>It’s only a moment later that Richard realizes that the two of them are no longer moving. Jared’s shoulders have tensed, his whole body frozen against Richard. With a dawning sense of horror, it occurs to him that he’s now in a far better position to hear, very clearly, the rapid, borderline hum of Jared’s heartbeat where Richard’s ear rests mere centimeters from his ribcage. He could probably track the rise of Jared’s chest with every inhale as well (not that he’s going to—would ever—it’s just. How they’re standing right now he—) if not for the fact that Jared seemed to be holding his breath. Richard can feel a new panic rising in him, all roads pointing to <em>flight, with a side of frantic apologies and little eye contact for the next week</em>, when Jared abruptly cuts into his thoughts with a barely audible “Richard?”</p><p>“Uh. Yeah?” Richard asks the poster on his wall. Jared hesitates, the seconds of silence agonizing as he stands perfectly still, the side of his face pressed against Jared’s sweater vest.</p><p>“Are you—comfortable?”</p><p>Richard wants to laugh, or scream, or just phase through the floor and into a new dimension where he doesn’t have to answer. That's the million dollar question, isn’t it? The short answer is no, he’s never comfortable, wanting to crawl out of your own skin at any given moment is integral to the Hendricks Experience. But that’s not really what Jared’s asking. He wants to know if Richard is comfortable right now, if <em>he’s </em>making Richard uncomfortable, and that’s a bit harder to answer. Because Richard can’t help but shrink away from Jared’s finely trained beam of adoration and devotion, knows how it looks when he flinches from his hugs and doting hands on reflex. He just isn’t built to receive what Jared is built to give and give and give and give. But—that doesn’t change the fact that most nights Richard just needs to nod, or look, or even clear his throat a certain way, and Jared knows to follow him; it doesn’t change how easily Richard finds it to spend hours on end babbling about whatever stupid shit is rattling around in his brain that week, or ranting about whatever petty thorn he’s gotten into his own side while Jared stands, hands folded in front of him, nodding earnestly and offering him more encouragement than he could ever figure out what to do with. Worst of all, over the alarm bells clanging in his brain, he has to admit that being close to Jared like this is easier than he’s fully ready to admit. It’s logical. It makes sense. If there’s one thing Richard’s actually good at, it’s finding things that fit together.</p><p>So, is Richard comfortable? He’s getting tired of this question. He doesn’t know, he can’t answer that. So he simply doesn’t.</p><p>“You can—you don’t have to stop.” Embarrassed, he moves to hide his face partially in the fabric of Jared’s sweater vest, muffling some of his words before he nearly snaps his neck back to the side. The last thing Jared needs right now is Richard essentially <em>nuzzling </em>his chest, christ, “we should probably keep practicing, I mean.”</p><p>Jared doesn’t say anything. He stays perfectly still, doesn’t even respond, as if there’s a delay between them. A few seconds pass, and then he’s nodding slowly, and stepping forward, hesitant. In spite of himself, Richard relaxes, letting himself lean in to Jared a bit more, sinking into the pendulum sway of it, able to follow more or less on autopilot. He fidgets, fingers curling and uncurling absently, accidentally brushing the nape of Jared’s neck on more than one occasion. He closes his eyes and focuses on giving his full attention to the way Jared’s arms have tightened almost imperceptibly around his waist—it seems like the right thing to do, committing it to memory so he can remember how to do it with Jen, later. The music playing from Jared’s phone is something acoustic, a little generic, the woman singing obviously putting on some kind of false accent, but Richard can’t help but think there’s something about it, the way it seems to fill in the shrinking space between them with something aggressively sincere and sentimental. He feels warm. It might be the knit fabric, linen-scented, against his cheek. Maybe he’s allergic.</p><p>“Jared.” it tumbles out of his mouth on impulse, his own voice landing heavily in between them like a stack of books thudding on the carpet.</p><p>Richard immediately feels something shift, then crack. Jared stalls again, hums softly in response, but Richard has no idea what he was going to say next. A vacuum of some kind has sucked all of the air out of the room, and a different kind of quiet rests firmly over the both of them. It’s nearly suffocating, something charged, heavy—Richard can almost feel the static crackling on his skin—a silence threatening to swallow them both. He feels Jared inhale, the shift in the room as he prepares to speak—  </p><p>Something buzzes abruptly. A shrill chime cuts through the air, startling them both. Richard jumps back, flailing as he tries to disentangle himself from Jared’s arms, hitting his elbow on the bed frame again. He holds up both his hands when Jared moves to help him, dismissing him with a frantic “fine, fine! I’m fine!” before ducking under the loft bed to reach his phone.</p><p>“Oh fuck—shit,” Richard trips over himself, nearly falling and crashing into the corner of the desk as he grabs it, managing to tap the accept button before the end of the third ring, “h-hey, um. Yeah. Ye-uhh, yes. Okay that’s—okay. Thanks.” He hangs up and sighs, taking a moment to catch his breath. Jared is looking at him expectantly, hands drawn up loosely to his chest.</p><p>“My uh...my Uber…” Richard shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Jared steeples his fingers. Richard can’t stop looking at his hands.</p><p>“Oh…” Jared says softly, before he lights up with recognition, “Oh! Richard, your date!” He reaches out, stepping forward in one long stride, to fuss with a stray curl on Richard’s head. Richard bats him away on impulse, drawing back like he’s been burned when his hand brushes Jared’s  fingers by accident. He takes another look at his phone. His driver Lorenzo is waiting for him outside in a 2011 white Toyota Camry.</p><p>“You should go,” Jared says, all bright eyes and genuine excitement, “you wouldn’t want to keep your lady waiting!” Richard gives a half-aborted chuckle at that. He scratches at the nape of his neck.</p><p>“Heh, yeah. I uh, I guess I should go.” He looks at the door, then back at Jared, “um. Thanks for the, uh, the,” he gestures between them, “the teaching of, how to do the...the dancing. Thank you for that.” Jared seems to actually<em> beam</em>, like Richard could switch off every light, and Jared would still emit a soft glow in the middle of his bedroom. He has a passing thought about torch carrying and the implications of Jared being able to literally guide him through darkness before he shakes his head, puts his phone in his pocket and hesitates before giving Jared an awkward pat on the shoulder.</p><p>“So I’ll uh. See you. Later.” Jared follows him out of his room, into the hallway and sees him off with a series of good luck wishes and an insistence that he try and have a good time. Richard quietly pledges to himself that he’ll at least put in the effort to have fun, if only so he doesn’t have to see Jared’s disappointed kicked-puppy face tomorrow, more upset on Richard’s behalf than he could ever be for himself.</p><p>Jen’s house isn’t far, and she’s already waiting outside when he pulls up. She looks beautiful: waves of brown hair cascading softly over her shoulders, the last bits of evening light reflecting all the shimmering details of her simple, elegant dress, the emerald green incredibly flattering against her tan skin. Richard feels more than a little embarrassed when she slides into the Camry’s backseat beside him. He wishes he’d sprung for a limo, or at the very least an Uber XL. This is humiliating.</p><p>“So, are you excited?” She turns to him with an eager smile, and Richard relaxes a bit. He gives Lorenzo directions to the convention center, and leans back into his seat. Jen talks about work, how YouTube’s future plans for moderation are a joke, and how it’s so nice to finally meet someone else who actually gives a shit about things for a change. Richard nods, rambles for a bit about Pied Piper until he feels self-conscious again and lets Jen go on a new rant. This one is about how her dog threw up on the carpet this morning, how it took her, like, an hour to get it out, and the way her roommate freaked out about it like it was some huge deal but refused to help her. This is doable, Richard thinks, he can handle this. Jen falls back against the seat with a dramatic huff, as if sharing the whole ordeal has exhausted her, rolls her eyes, and gives him a good-natured smirk.</p><p>“You have roommates, right? What are they like?” She takes one of the tiny water bottles Lorenzo has left in the storage pocket behind the driver’s seat and cracks it open.</p><p>“Oh, you know. I work with them, so,” He thinks about Dinesh taking over an hour in the bathroom every morning to shower and “get ready”, whatever that means. He thinks about the creepy, red-eyed, stuffed weasel named Rasputina that Gilfoyle had bought online to “improve the living room” over the summer. He thinks about the resulting psychological warfare that had transpired when Erlich got territorial, and demanded that the weasel be discarded. He and Gilfoyle kept moving it around the hostel like a fucking elf on a shelf for the better part of a week until Jin Yang threw it in the garbage and set the entire barrel on fire just to get them to shut the fuck up.</p><p>And, of course, he thinks about Jared.</p><p>Does Jared count as a roommate? Probably not, Richard probably shouldn’t mention him. Jared’s just a friend who lives in their garage. He’s the guy who doesn’t always knock when he follows Richard into his room, because he knows he doesn’t need to. He’s the guy who still hovers in the threshold and asks if he can come in, even when he knows the answer is going to be yes. He’s just somebody Richard talks to when something’s bothering him, or when he needs help, or sometimes, when he just wants someone around, because Jared has such phenomenal, unshakable faith in him, the only one Richard never feels he really needs to prove himself to. And sometimes that’s terrifying, and sometimes it’s a relief, but it’s something Richard isn’t sure he could ever live without.</p><p>But Jared isn’t technically a roommate. He has his own condo, legally speaking, and he could find somewhere else to go if he really wanted to, because Jared’s sensitive and maybe a little much, but he isn’t helpless like Richard. He’s probably more of a legitimate adult by most standards than the rest of them combined, competent and able to hold his own despite all the things he’s been through that Richard barely understands. No, Jared isn’t a roommate, he’s just the guy who stays, so Richard doesn’t bother to tell Jen about any of it: Jared’s huge, freezing hands, the demure way he has to duck under most doorways, how (and Richard notices, he really does) Jared does his best to apologize for every centimeter of space he takes up, and how angry it makes Richard sometimes to see how good he’s learned to be at making himself small. He doesn’t tell her about falling asleep on couches, at desks, at kitchen tables, and waking up with blankets and cups of water. He doesn’t talk about how he never used to really drink tea. He doesn’t mention the color blue. Jared is just his friend.</p><p>Or maybe...is Jared his best friend? Not really. He has Big Head, who probably knows just as, if not more about Richard; the two of them have been inseparable since they were actual children. But he concedes that Jared has become something almost like a best friend when Richard wasn’t looking, when he was too busy coding and slapping Jared’s hands away every time he tried to gingerly pick a piece of lint from Richard’s sweater, or smooth out his collar. Maybe it’s a fraught question, trying to parse what Jared is to Richard. It’s too messy. It feels dangerous, it feels—</p><p>It feels like Richard has been punched in the chest by the universe itself, like a weight has been lifted, briefly, off his shoulders, only to press down twice as hard. When all the pieces fall into place, the most devastating part is that really, it all makes sense. It’s all perfectly logical, basic reasoning. He really should have known better.</p><p>Of course it’s him.</p><p>Richard feels a cable inside of him, somewhere, snap. Something else is careening down fifteen stories (at <em>least</em>) towards pavement. He may be having some kind of out of body experience in the middle of this Camry.</p><p>Jen had been talking at him about garden variety Friendly Small Talk subjects for the better part of the ride, but now she’s scrolling through Instagram, unaware of the crisis Richard has catapulted himself into. He jumps as the car comes to a stop at the valet area a bit jerkily, catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. He looks ill, pale and miserable and on the brink of keeling over in poor Lorenzo’s five star Toyota, passing away right here on his beautiful leather upholstery, which is probably why Lorenzo turns to them, and kindly—pointedly—exclaims “here we are!”</p><p>Jen turns to him, grinning, either too kind or too excited to call attention to Richard’s soul leaving his body, “Ready?” She asks. He nods, shakily, and stumbles out of the car.</p><p>“Yeah, haha, let’s uh—let’s do this then!” He holds his hand out and bows awkwardly at the waist, “m’lady,” Jen snorts, and takes his hand, a pretty warm blush coloring her cheeks.</p><p>This is fine. It’s manageable. Richard is going to take this nice, pretty girl to a gala. They will eat some weird fish, dance to some non-threatening music, and have a great night, and then  he can figure the rest out in the morning. Yes. Yeah. And anyway, Jared had wanted him to have fun. Richard had even promised himself he would try and pull it off, just so he wouldn't have to see Jared’s heart break when he reported back that it was anything less than a Disney renaissance film. If nothing else, he’s going to have a good night for Jared, and process whatever this fucked up revelation is tomorrow. He exhales and nods with a sense of determination</p><p>Jen threads their fingers together and squeezes. Her hand looks small and delicate compared to his own.</p><p>Richard pitches forward and vomits into a decorative outdoor plant.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you enjoyed this fic, please feel free to comment, give kudos and follow me on tumblr (jareddvnn) or twitter (@buddyfuckr) where I continue to Yell. HUGE thanks to my friend Dev (@astrosapling on Twitter) for betareading. </p><p>Please stream Bodys by Car Seat Headrest. All rise for the Richard Hendricks repressed homosexual word salad national anthem. </p><p>This fic was converted for free using <a href="https://aoyeet.space">AOYeet!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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